“Is it possible?” She stared at him with a puzzled interest. She knew nothing of the worldly and mental precocity of young Englishmen of Ordham’s class, and Ordham was himself in more ways than one.
“ ‘Tormented soul.’ Nothing could express it more perfectly.” She continued in a moment: “It was developed for some other planet where all conditions are higher and more satisfying than on this, then strayed here through some mismanagement of the Unknown Forces—and into the dark passages of a Wittelsbach brain, of all places! If he only had been in a position to work out his one hope of mortal salvation—to become a great artist. Genius inflamed and smothered by the megalomania of a king—and of a king with no part to play on the stage of Europe! No wonder there are abysses in his brain for which this life will build no bridges.”
“Do you know him well?”
“I have never exchanged a word with him, never met him face to face.”
“No?” Ordham turned to her with a quickened interest. He had attributed the Nachmeister’s defence to the amiable mood of the moment, but it did not occur to him to doubt the word of Margarethe Styr. “He has shown you so much favour—”
“He is grateful for my voice, poor soul, for it gives him a few moments’ happiness. But I shall never know him. I wish I might. I understand him so well.”
“Then you too do not belong to this planet?”
“I wonder you did not add that I too have a tormented soul.”
“That is what I meant.”
“But I have not.” She looked at him steadily. “Perhaps—once—yes. But that is long past. You, being a man, with a more sensitive fibre in you than most men possess,—you may catch just a glimmer of the depths of Ludwig, in spite of your tender years. But there is one thing of which you know absolutely nothing, and that is the intense and absorbing joy that an artist finds in his art.”